Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, we are on the nomination of Congressman Bridenstine to be the new Administrator at NASA. I want to tie it into what I will talk about in a moment because it comes down to Presidential appointments and the problems we are running into with regard to them.

I was not enthused by the nomination. It is nothing personal against Mr. Bridenstine. I feel that NASA is an organization that needs to be led by a space professional. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, the Acting Administrator resigned--or, I should say, retired. His last day on the job is the 30th. So it leaves us with the prospect of this incredibly important agency for Florida and the country with a vacancy in its top job. We are on our second Acting Administrator. If one were to do the math, even if Congressman Bridenstine were to withdraw and a new vetting process were to begin for a new nominee, by the time it would work its way through the administration, the committee process, and the floor, the way things are going here, we could be into February-March, at the earliest, of next year. There is no way NASA can go 2 years and X number of months without having a permanent Administrator.

One makes these decisions always under the context that a President should have significant discretion in picking the team. Whether you like it or not, millions of Americans last year voted for the President. He was elected, and he has a right to govern. In 4 years--in less than 4 years now, in 2\1/2\ years--the American people will have the chance, once again, through our democratic process, to opine on whether or not they will want him to have a second term. Our job here is to provide advice and consent. We are to analyze these nominees and determine whether or not we want to support them.

My view of it is, as has been the tradition of the Senate for the entire existence of the Republic, that we give great deference to the President on choosing the qualifications. We want to make sure that people are qualified and that there is nothing about them that would disqualify them. It is my view that the more important the job the more discretion the President deserves. It is why, although I had significant reservations about the nomination of Secretary Tillerson, I decided to support it, because I believed the President deserved significant discretion. When you get to the subsecretaries and the like, I think that discretion diminishes.

It is what has led me to decide to support Congressman Bridenstine, despite my reservations, and it is what, I hope, will lead my colleagues--at least a sufficient number--to support the nomination of Mike Pompeo to be the Secretary of State.

Let me read you some of the previous votes we have had here in the Senate. All but one of them predates my service.

Colin Powell was confirmed by a voice vote, which is almost unimaginable in a 21st century Senate, but in 2001, on January 20, by a unanimous voice vote, he was confirmed as the Secretary of State.

A few years later, in 2005, Condoleezza Rice was confirmed as Secretary of State by a vote of 85 to 13. Now, it was still 13 noes, but, nonetheless, it was 85 yeses. I assure you that not everyone who voted for her was happy about her nomination. People didn't necessarily agree with her. One of the people who supported her, I believe, was future President Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton was nominated and confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 94 to 2, and I promise you that a significant number of the Members on my side of the aisle may have respected Secretary Clinton but strongly disagreed with her and her views on a number of issues, but, nonetheless, they felt the President deserved to have his nominee.

When she resigned, her replacement was then-Senator Kerry, who was the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, with whom I had significant policy disagreements in the Senate and during his time as Secretary of State. Yet I, along with 93 other Members of the Senate, supported his nomination, and he was confirmed. Nomination of Mike Pompeo

Madam President, we now have the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency--a man who is clearly qualified. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, a person who has served this country in uniform, who has served his country in Congress, who has been successful in the private sector, and who has served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

We have learned over the last couple of days that the President has significant trust in him, so much so that he was willing to send him privately to begin setting the stage for, perhaps, the most important short-term diplomatic engagement this country will have with North Korea. By the way, one of the most important things you want in a Secretary of State is for the President to have confidence in him. You have to have someone who, when he goes abroad and meets with people, the people know he has the President's ear and speaks for the administration. Mike Pompeo clearly has that. Yet we face the prospect of significant opposition to the point at which there are questions about whether it will pass in the committee. Although, I think it will pass on the floor.

I hope people will recalibrate their thinking. I don't think you have to agree with Mike Pompeo. You most certainly don't have to feel that he is the person you would have picked had you been President. You need to recognize that you are not the President, and none of us here are the President. The President deserves to have a team of people whom he trusts and can work with and who are qualified. I do not believe anyone could argue that Mike Pompeo is not qualified. He is certainly as qualified--in fact, I would argue more qualified--as the person whom he would replace in terms of experience in his field. I hope people understand that and are willing to be a little bit flexible about this.

I understand the interest groups are ginning up. Listen, we have the same thing on our side of the aisle. In full disclosure and candor, when President Obama was the President, there were interest groups on the right of center who constantly pressured Congress to oppose everything, not just legislation but also nominees. I assure you that I did not get a lot of love mail when I decided to support Senator Kerry at the time. But it was the right thing to do because he was clearly qualified, and that is who the President wanted. I hope that that is what we will do in this case in confirming Mike Pompeo, because this Nation faces some very significant challenges in foreign policy that need to be immediately addressed, and we simply cannot do that without a Secretary of State.

For me, that became quite apparent this weekend. I happened to travel to Lima, Peru, for the Summit of the Americas. The Vice President attended on the President's behalf because of the situation in Syria, and the Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Sullivan, was there and did a good job, but there is no replacement for a Secretary of State. We had no Secretary of State at the summit. The key issue--one that, I think, Director Pompeo, if confirmed as Secretary, could help with--is the situation in Venezuela. Venezuela

Madam President, I understand that the headlines are dominated by events in the Middle East and by the geopolitical and economic and trade conflict between the United States and China, but I do want to take a moment to talk about something that I have been speaking about on the floor of the Senate for the better part of 4\1/2\ years. It is one that I know that Director Pompeo knows well, as we have talked about it extensively, and that is the growing catastrophe that is Venezuela.

To begin, I want to say clearly that we should care about it simply because that catastrophe has become a threat to the United States and to the region.

What do I mean by that?

First, the regime in control, Nicolas Maduro's, is a state sponsor of drug trafficking. It is very simple. What I mean by that is this: Drug trafficking networks enjoy the protection of the Venezuelan Government. In fact, one of the concessions--literally, one of the contracts--that the Maduro regime gives its cronies and loyalists is drug trafficking networks.

A drug trafficker who wants to move coca out through Colombia, into Venezuela, and then into the Caribbean or Europe will find the right general or the right individual in the Maduro government, and that individual will ensure that his plane is not shot down and that, in fact, the military and the government organisms of the Government of Venezuela--of the Government of Maduro--protect him, facilitate him. The people who are supposed to be stopping him are helping him. It is a racket. It resembles organized crime. That is what Maduro does.

We have seen an incredible surge in coca production in Colombia to historic levels over the last couple of years, and it is headed here, to a nation that is already struggling with an opioid crisis. We are about to be flooded with cheap cocaine once again, and a significant amount of it will be trafficked into this country with the aid, the assistance, and the support of the dictator in Venezuela. That is a threat to the United States and to the region.

No. 2, he is a threat to the United States and to the region because he has triggered a migratory crisis that is destabilizing all of Venezuela's neighbors, primarily Colombia, which each day is absorbing tens of thousands of people fleeing starvation and rampant disease, unlike anything we have ever seen, absent a natural disaster in this hemisphere. It is destabilizing countries that are already struggling.

Colombia is already struggling to try to deal with drug trafficking groups that are, in many parts of that country, more powerful than the government in some areas and the demobilization of the FARC and another terrorist group called the ELN. We have invested, along with our Colombian partners, millions and millions of American taxpayer dollars to help Colombia, which, just a decade and a half ago, was on the verge of being a failed state. We helped them to succeed. They are among our best allies in the world and, certainly, if not our best, one of the best, top-of-the-list allies in the Western Hemisphere. They are being destabilized because they are absorbing tens of thousands of migrants a day who are fleeing not just political oppression but starvation.

Healthcare experts are telling us that children in Venezuela will not fully develop physically to their full potential because they are malnourished today. Infants, newborns are dying in cribs and in hospitals because of a lack of medicine and because of a lack of food. These are images that we are used to seeing in other parts of the world, and it breaks our hearts when it happens somewhere else. This is happening in our hemisphere, and it is all man-made in one of the richest countries in the hemisphere--the most oil-rich country on the planet that just a few years ago was one of the most prosperous economies in the entire region.

People are starving, and they are starving because of a man-made crisis. The Maduro regime uses food as a weapon. No. 1, one of the other concessions it gives the cronies around Maduro is that if they are loyalists, he puts them in charge of food distribution. What does that mean? That means you can siphon the food into the black market where you can make an exorbitant profit. You obviously are going to take some for yourself so that your family gets to eat.

Then they have the sick process where, in order for you to get food from the government, you have to show up with your government-issued ID in Venezuela. They know who the government supporters are, and they know who isn't. They know who turns out to vote, and they know who doesn't. It is a fraudulent election, by the way, because ultimately they will manipulate it as they have done before. So imagine that they know you didn't vote for them. They know how you voted because they monitor the machines. If you support the government, you get food, and if you don't, you don't get food. That is why he doesn't want food coming in.

The third is that we are engaged in what, I believe, is global competition or a battle between authoritarianism and democracy. There is a rise in the threat of authoritarianism in Turkey, in the Philippines, obviously in China and Russia, and in this hemisphere it is Venezuela. Venezuela is openly attacking the regional democratic order. They have basically canceled their Constitution. They have tried to replace the democratically elected national assembly. They have removed the legitimate judiciary branch and replaced it with loyalists of their own.

Fourth, there is a growing body of evidence that the Maduro regime provides a platform for the enemies of the security of the United States, including Russia and Hezbollah.

The spillover effects are undermining our efforts and the efforts of our regional partners to promote democracy, human rights, and stability in our own backyard in our hemisphere. That was apparent last week at the Summit of the Americas, where a growing number of countries-- Argentina, Brazil, Peru--are making incredible strides and continue to build upon the democratic structures they have in place. The Peruvian President recently had to resign after a previous President resigned because the rule of law is working. In Brazil, it is the same thing. They are going to have elections this year in Mexico, in Brazil, in Colombia. These will be legitimate elections. They may elect someone who agrees with us 50 percent of the time, and they may elect someone who agrees with us 90 percent of the time, but they will elect someone. Yet, in stark contrast to that, is basically a coup d'etat that has occurred in Venezuela, where a small group of people have canceled the democratic order or at least they have tried to.

In all of this, there is great news; that is, for the first time in recent memory, the democracies of the region have come together to act on this. It began with the so-called Lima Group, which is a collection of countries that make up the overwhelming majority of the economic power and the population size of the hemisphere. They have long banded together to criticize the democratic order. We are not even officially a member of it, but they have been supportive of the moves made by this administration to target Maduro.

Well, last week at the summit, all the members of the Lima Group, plus two--the Bahamas and the Government of the United States--issued a joint statement rejecting the sham Presidential vote on May 20 in favor of free elections and strongly urging the Venezuelan dictatorship to release all political prisoners. The problem, as I met with members of civil society and the legitimate elected representatives in the National Assembly of Venezuela, is that we have reached an inflection point now. Statements, letters, communiques are fine, but the time to act is now because people are dying. They are starving to death. The humanitarian crisis alone compels us to take action.

The question posed to me is: Well, what can we do? Some of the traditional ideas that people roll out there are additional sanctions. Sure, but there is more that can be done, and I want to quickly highlight what I hope will be the three things that happen.

The first is--well, let's decide first on a forum. The ideal forum to deal with this is a multilateral organization created specifically for the purpose of defending democracy in the Western hemisphere. That is called the Organization of American States. It is a group of 34 nations, and it was designed to deal exactly with this. Sadly, there is a small--and I mean a very small minority--of some of the smallest countries in the OAS, particularly in the Caribbean, that frankly have been bribed and/or compromised from voting against the Maduro regime because either they continue to receive cheap oil in dwindling amounts or their leaders in this government or the previous one basically stole the money and the oil, and now the Venezuelans know it, and they are going to release it publicly if these guys break from them. A small number of these countries representing less than 10 or 15 percent-- maybe even less than 10 percent--of the population of the region have banded together to prevent the OAS from expelling Venezuela, a dictatorship, from the OAS, an organization of democracies. I don't think we should give up on the OAS. We should continue to try for the OAS to be the forum for the plan I am about to outline. But if that doesn't work, then there has to be an alternative, and the alternative should be the Lima Group, plus at least one--the United States. What I hope will happen is that the Lima Group will meet before or shortly after the May election and that it will be a meeting of Treasury Ministers, Foreign Ministers or both, which is why we need a Secretary of State to be there, to chart a regional approach on a way forward to Venezuela.

Here is what I believe that regional approach should be. No. 1 is that we must collectively announce that we are going to continue to increase in a multilateral way the pressure on the Maduro regime, and the way we should do that is by coordinating these national-level sanctions that target criminal elements of the Maduro regime--target these drug traffickers, target the people who are trafficking in the food and controlling the food distribution for their own purposes, target the shell companies they are using to make money, store their money, and hide their money. If all of these nations did that, encompassing the U.S. financial sector--the Brazilian, the Colombian, the Panamanian banking sectors, which will be critical in this--it would provide increasing pressure on that regime and on Maduro's loyalists to break. The goal is to maximize the pain felt by these corrupt, oppressive, and illegitimate government officials.

The second thing we need to do is address the humanitarian crisis, which is spiraling out of control. As I have said already, three to four million Venezuelans have fled their country to escape starvation, deprivation, violence. Neighboring states are bearing disproportional burdens, and they need help in doing so. I think we need to continue to provide that assistance.

Ultimately, the answer to Venezuela's future is not outside of Venezuela, but it is inside of it. That is why it is my hope that the priority of this new group--the Lima Group, plus at least one, the United States--would be to open up a humanitarian corridor that allows food and medicine to go inside Venezuela, and it can be distributed by a nongovernmental organization. Put the Catholic Church in charge or the Red Cross. It can't be the Maduro government; they will steal it. In fact, they will not even allow it. The Maduro regime will not allow humanitarian aid to come in because, one, they would lose the leverage of using food and medicine against their people and, two, they would have to acknowledge they have a crisis. We must do all we can to force that avenue to open so that we can deliver food and medicine to the people who are dying and starving. They are dying of simple diseases for a lack of basic medicine.

It is critical to let the people of Venezuela know that food, medicine, and international aid are ready to be delivered to their country by putting up pictures of the trucks and the warehouses showing that all of this food and all of these medicines are ready to come in, and the only thing standing in the way is the corrupt, evil government that today has empowered itself in their nation.

The third thing we need to be doing as part of this plan is preparing to help rebuild a free and democratic Venezuela after Maduro leaves power. The third goal I hope this gathering will reach is a consensus and an agreement that we will set up the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for Venezuela that includes investment from the Inter-American Development Bank and significant contributions from the United States and our partners to help rebuild the disaster and the catastrophe that the Maduro regime will leave behind.

We also need to help empower legitimate institutions. When we talk about the Venezuelan opposition, what we need to understand is that these are not rebels in a mountain; these are the National Assembly elected by their people. It would be as if a parallel Senate were created and we were no longer paid salaries, had staff, often no longer allowed to meet, and our laws were no longer given the force of law. That is what has happened, but the National Assembly is there. We need to support them. We need to make clear they are the legitimate representatives of the Venezuelan people--the only leaders in that government today, along with some of the Governors who were legitimately elected under the Venezuelan Constitution. They are having a problem, by the way. When they show up at our Embassy in Venezuela, they are being denied visas to travel abroad. At a minimum, we should be granting them visas to travel abroad, recognizing them as fellow Parliamentarians who have a right to speak on behalf of the people of Venezuela.

The other thing we need to do is cooperate with the real equivalent of a Supreme Court--many of whom are now in exile but who continue to meet. That is their credible and legitimate judicial system, and we should be cooperating with them and helping them. They have all sorts of information about corruption that implicates Venezuelan activities in the United States.

I will close with this. The dictatorship in Venezuela knows and the people who surround Nicholas Maduro know they are on borrowed time. It is our obligation to expedite that, not through a military intervention, not through simple unilateral sanctions--which I support, and we are prepared to continue to do--but ideally through an international, multinational, regional effort in which the United States is a partner with our allies in the region. We should continue to pressure the regime with sanctions, to deliver humanitarian aid inside and outside of Venezuela, and to create the mechanisms to rebuild that country's institutions and its economy. This is an opportunity for regional leadership.

At a time when democracy and authoritarianism are in conflict all over the world, this is an opportunity to deliver a decisive blow to authoritarianism in our hemisphere. It cannot happen with America alone, but it cannot happen without American leadership. This is the plan I hope we will pursue. This is the method I hope we will use, but to do it we need a strong leader at the Department of State to be a catalyst for all of this. This is why I urge my colleagues to rally and support doing something about Venezuela, and one of the best ways we can do that right now is to confirm Mike Pompeo as the next Secretary of State.

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